The invention relates to an apparatus for producing printed products comprising one or more individual sub-products, e.g. newspapers, periodicals and the like, having a plurality of successive receiving positions arranged between at least one sub-product feeding station and at least one product removal station.
The prior art discloses apparatuses which may be provided upstream or downstream of apparatuses for collating or processing printed products and which are suitable only for folding printed products.
Thus, for example, European Patent Application EP-A-0583602 discloses a folding apparatus to which individual sheets, or groups of sheets, which are to be folded can be fed in series, it then being possible for such sheets or groups of sheets to be folded simultaneously in a plurality of folding units. In this arrangement, the folding units exhibit transversely movable folding rollers between which the sub-products which are to be folded can be moved by means of a folding blade.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,966,185 also discloses a folding device with two interacting folding rollers between which the sub-product which is to be folded can be moved by means of a folding blade.
Finally, German DE-OS 26 09 059 gives a description of a device for folding printed sub-products, in which printed sub-products which are to be folded can each be folded within a compartment of a star feeder which is circularly driven.
These known apparatuses can be combined only with a high degree of precision to effectively collate or process printed products, and some of the known apparatuses are mechanically complicated and some are not suitable for processing a continuous sub-product stream.